Food and Exercise Diary

One of the best tools a personal trainer can use when helping a client lose body fat is to have them strictly adhere to completing a nutrition and activity log. Studies have shown that just the act of recording exercise and the foods you eat instantly and significantly results in better choices. You don’t even have to worry about overstepping your scope of practice in terms of offering nutritional advice. For most people, small changes to their nutrition program can result in big differences to their body composition. You can review whether they are consuming enough water, eating consistently throughout the day, eating too late, or controlling portion sizes. As a trainer, you can look to the journal to reveal bad habits or patterns that your clients have. For example, you may notice that on the days your client exercises, they eat well and the days they don’t, their nutrition is poor. Pointing out these patterns to a client is the first step towards changed behavior.

Provide the following instructions to your clients regarding completing their logs:

Exercise. Record exactly how much cardiovascular and muscle conditioning exercise you perform each day, as well as the intensity of each workout and the type of exercise.

Nutrition. Record precisely when you eat or drink anything. You may notice that you consistently eat too late, that most of your calories are consumed too late in the day, that you are eating too few meals or that you are leaving too much time between meals. Look for unhealthy patterns. Record exactly what you eat and drink. This data is very important, and you are going to want to be precise. It helps if you carry your log book with you so you can record your meal right after you eat. You should record every single thing you put in your mouth – including water – and record the exact amounts. Noting portion size is critical to helping you determine where you can cut back if you need to reduce your caloric intake. Record where you eat and who you are with. You may notice that when you sit in front of the TV, you always eat or eat too much. You may discover that on the weekends when you go out with friends, you always overeat. You may determine you are a social eater. Record how you feel during each meal. Are you bored, lonely, depressed, excited, happy, stressed out? You may discover that you are an emotional eater and need to come up with a list of alternative activities for times when you are experiencing these feelings. Record how you are feeling after each meal. Did you overeat or eat just until you were comfortably satisfied?

Daily gratification. We like to include a section in the daily log where you will record at least one thing that happened or something you saw on that day that you are grateful for. It just seems to add so much more value to each and every day! We find that then you’ll always look for the positive in life instead of simply "giving in" to the stresses and daily turmoils.

Goal setting. We like to encourage setting and reassessing goals on a daily basis. Every day, decide what your goal for the day will be, whether it is drinking eight glasses of water, eating five vegetable servings, or consuming five small meals instead of three big ones. Pick an area that you need to focus on and then stick with it for the entire day. At the end of the day, reassess your goal. Did you achieve it? Yes - Congratulations! No – Why not? What can you do tomorrow to ensure success? You can reset the same goal or focus on a completely different area.

At the end of each week, complete the Weekly Synopsis sheet. This sheet allows you to get an overview of how you did throughout the previous week. It will help to determine the areas you are succeeding in and the areas that require greater focus. You will require a calculator to perform the synopsis. Below is an example of the activity log we use:

Total cardio-vascular time (minutes)
Total number of cardio sessions
Total number of muscle-conditioning workouts
Average number of glasses of water/day
Average number of vegetables/day
Average number of fruits/day
Number of days five small meals/snacks consumed
Number of days alcohol was consumed
Number of days stopped eating 3 hours before bed

About the author: Sherri McMillan

Sherri McMillan, M.Sc., has been inspiring the world to adopt a fitness lifestyle for over 25 years and has received numerous industry awards including the 2010 CanFitPro International Presenter of the Year, 2006 IDEA Fitness Director of the Year, 1998 IDEA Personal Trainer of the Year, and the 1998 CanFitPro Fitness Presenter of the Year. Her million dollar training studio in Vancouver, WA, has been awarded the prestigious Better Business Bureau Business of the Year recognition and the Chamber of Commerce Community Builder award for her community and fundraising efforts. She is a fitness trainer, fitness columnist for various magazines and newspapers, author of five books and manuals including "Go For Fit - the Winning Way to Fat Loss," "Fit over Forty" and "The Successful Trainers Guide to Marketing," featured presenter in various fitness DVDs, international fitness presenter, and a spokesperson for Nike, Schwinn and PowerBar.